Theudigisel (or Theudegisel) (in Latin Theudigisclus and in Spanish, Galician and Portuguese Teudiselo, Teudigiselo, or Teudisclo), (c. 500 – December 549) was king of the Visigoths in Hispania and Septimania (548–549). Some Visigothic king lists skip Theudigisel, as well as Agila I, going directly from Theudis to Athanagild.
Theudigisel was a leading general of Theudis, and, when the latter was murdered, managed to make himself king.[1] He had repelled the Franks from Spain after their invasion of 541, cutting them off in the pass of Valcarlos, but accepted a bribe to allow them to return to home.[2]
According to Isidore of Seville, Theudigisel was assassinated because he "defiled the marriages of very many powerful men by public prostitution", and was assassinated by a group of conspirators during a banquet in Seville.[3] Although he agrees that Theudigisel died during a banquet, Gregory of Tours records a different tale of his end: in the middle of the feast, the lights were blown out and an unidentified person killed Theudigisel in the dark. "The Goths had adopted the reprehensible habit of killing out of hand any king who displeased them and replacing him on the throne by someone they preferred," Gregory concludes.[4]
References
- ^ Peter Heather, The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 278
- ^ Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms: 450-751 (London: Longman, 1994), p. 170
- ^ Isidore of Seville, Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum, chapter 44. Translation by Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford, Isidore of Seville's History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, second revised edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), p. 21
- ^ Gregory of Tours, Decem Libri Historiarum, III.30. Translated by Lewis Thorpe, History of the Franks (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 187
| Regnal titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Theudis | King of the Visigoths 548–549 | Succeeded by Agila I |